Wow! It sounds like the JUDGE, not the jury, may have freed Zimmerman.

[onenote]

168. If that is what the prosecution was arguing then they deserved to lose the motion

One does not become an initial aggressor in Florida (or in any other state I can think of) by simply getting out of a car and following someone. One of the leading treatises on criminal law (Wharton's Criminal Law) has explained that provocation requires the actual use of force by the aggressor against the other person or the issuing of an actual (not perceived) threat to use force. The treatise also indicates that it is not provocation to follow someone and demand from them an explanation of their conduct.

So I have trouble believing that the prosecution thought it could get the court to invoke the provocation exception simply based on the fact that Zimmerman got out his car or even that Zimmerman followed and confronted Trayvon. Moreover, under Florida law, even if Zimmerman's getting out of his car and/or following Trayvon was provocation (and the case law says it isn't). the state would still have had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman's use of deadly force was not based on a reasonable belief, at the time he used deadly force, that he faced imminent death or great bodily harm. Given that this is the standard for claiming self defense, if the jury's decision was based on self defense, then the failure to give the provocation instruction would be harmless error.